by Nell Brien
“You don’t need to be defensive, Mr. Campbell. I am not accusing you of anything. Anyway—” she could not resist the dig “—I haven’t come here to discuss the decimation of Africa’s wildlife. I just need the documents you have.”
“Sit down.” He pushed a chair toward her. “Have some coffee.” He went to the door, opened it, yelled in a language Cat thought was Swahili. The sound of a female voice answering in the same language floated across the garden. “Mary clings to the old ways,” he said in explanation. “She won’t use the intercom.” He gestured impatiently to the chair he’d placed for her. “Sit down, for God’s sake.”
Reluctantly, Cat did as he asked and he resumed his own seat in an ancient swivel chair behind his desk. He leaned back, peaked fingers pressed to his chin, and stared at her. “I hear you’re talking to Brian Ward.”
“How did you hear that?”
“This is a small town, Miss Stanton. Have you engaged him?”
“Not yet.”
Mary shouldered open the door and Campbell rose to take the tray from her. He murmured a few words in Swahili and placed the tray on his desk.
“Safari simply means journey in Swahili, did you know that?” he said. “Interesting language, Swahili. Arab slavers brought it down the coast and along the old slaving routes. Sugar?”
“One, please.”
The cups were English bone china, the teaspoons sterling with the lovely patina that only age and use and care give to silver. She took the cup he handed her and shook her head at the plate of homemade cookies.
“Mr. Campbell, I’d like to talk to you about my brother.”
“I’ve nothing to add to what’s already been said. I was hired for this job because I know the bush, and my best advice to you now is to return to Los Angeles. Send a male colleague and I promise you I will do all I can to get a good professional—”
She interrupted. “That’s not going to happen.” She leaned forward, placed her cup on his desk. “You seem to think you’re the only game in town. But you’re not. If I have to, I’ll get Land Rovers and hire a crew myself. And I’ll leave Nairobi as soon as that is done. I’ll follow the route Joel worked out with you. Borders or no borders. Papers or no papers.”
“You think you can follow that route?”
“Why not?”
“Fools rush in.” Grim-faced, Campbell picked up a folder from his desk. “All right.”
Cat reached into her bag, tossed a pen onto the table. “Sign the papers over to me personally.”
“I mean, I’ll take you myself.”
She stared at him, startled. She wanted to tell him she didn’t need his help, she could do it alone, but she left the words unspoken. There was no Joel anymore to stand steady when she needed it. No one to bail her out. “Thank you. Why the change of heart?”
He shrugged. “It’s a job.”
“Did Stephen N’toya call you?”
“N’toya? I don’t recognize the name. Why would he call me?”
“He’s a friend, and I just wondered if he might have called to ask you to change your mind.”
He shook his head. “I don’t change my mind because someone asks nicely, Miss Stanton. Right, then. Let’s talk about the conditions of this offer.”
“What does that mean, conditions?”
“It means that out in the bush, you will do exactly as you are told. Whether you understand or not, I want you to do as you are told, by me or my men, without argument or hesitation.”
“Are you serious?”
“I never joke about life and death. I won’t have you endangering the men’s lives, or my life come to that, because you can’t handle yourself in difficult situations.”
Cat looked at him. “You’re not talking about me. You’re talking about Joel—”
“I’m telling you we travel hard and Pax Britannica is a thing of the past. We’ll be getting into harsh country. Remember that.”
“What happened to my brother?”
“We’ve been over this. Jesus.” He threw the pen onto the desk. “This is going to be a bloody hard slog. I cannot keep on about your brother—”
“Then answer my questions.”
“For God’s sake.” Campbell’s chair protested as he got abruptly to his feet. It rolled back, crashed into bookshelves behind the desk. Two large volumes fell to the floor. “He was killed. No one could have prevented it. No one.”
“Isn’t that why you were there? To protect him?”
“I was there to show him some pretty spectacular country and help him find a site for a bloody hotel.”
“You say yourself you’re an expert. Your job was to see that he could do his job safely, that he didn’t get into trouble, even if he was rash. But you didn’t. You didn’t protect him.”
“Why the hell do you insist on knowing the details? What good will it do you?”
Cat stared at him without answering.
“All right,” he said. “It happened about sunset. We suddenly ran into a herd of buffalo, and they’re testy buggers at best. The herd was spread out and bloody nervous. Something was obviously wrong. It was early in the season but calves had already been dropped, and lions were about.”
Campbell had moved and was standing in front of the Tsavo lion as if to draw attention to its fangs, the size of the enormous head. Cat could hardly breathe. Whether it was true or whether Campbell was completely self-serving, this was the first eyewitness account of what had happened.
Campbell went on. “There’s no way to get around them and we were driving slowly so’s not to spook them. But then we came across a group of cows starting to calve.” He stopped. Then he said harshly, “Your brother got out of the Land Rover. In spite of being warned, he grabbed his camera and he jumped out. We couldn’t shout to warn him for fear of starting a stampede. He got too close, that bloody camera clicking away. The herd was restless, and something—lions or the camera, who the hell knows what—something set them off. A couple of the big bulls charged, then everything was moving at once. We couldn’t reach him, and he couldn’t get out of the way. That’s about all. I’m sorry.”
“Why didn’t you stop him?”
“You mean, why didn’t I tie him down?”
“No, I don’t mean tie him down.” Suddenly she was damp with sweat and cold, her nerve endings rippling. Joel had too much experience in wild places. He would never have taken such a chance. Something was not right here. “What happened to the film?” she asked.
“The film? The bloody film? Who the hell do you think cares about film at a time like that?”
“Afterward you could have thought about it. His cameras were returned empty, and all the exposed film is missing.”
“The cameras were turned over to the authorities with the rest of his gear. I spend about ninety percent of my time in the bush, so I’m not up to date on the details. I have no idea what the bloody bureaucrats did with the film.”
“Obviously someone tampered with his cameras.” Campbell shook his head impatiently. “Do I look as if I need to pilfer a client’s bloody cameras? What more can I tell you?”
Cat stared at him. “You didn’t like my brother, did you?”
“No, I didn’t. And the feeling was mutual.”
Cat nodded. “Let me ask you something. Why are you doing this? Helping us get a site for a hotel, I mean. I don’t see you as a man who’d appreciate luxury hotels being built in remote areas.”
“Kenya needs hard currency. Tourism brings it in.”
“But you’d prefer to keep Kenya the way it is.”
“No. I’d like to have kept it the way it was.” He bent to pick up the two large books that had fallen. Cat caught the titles. Hunting Big Game in East Africa, by John Giles Bingham. Memoirs of a Hunting Man, by Lord James Percheron. Old books, written when the white man was supreme in Africa. “So,” Campbell said over his shoulder, “what’s it going to be?”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, if you a
re not capable of following orders, let’s not waste each other’s time.”
“Okay, I’ll try to remember to jump when you shout. Bwana.”
Campbell shook his head. “Christ, I need my brain tested.”
“I want to go first to Mount Elgon—”
“Not this time of year. We’ll go west toward the Mara—”
“We have to follow Joel’s route exactly.”
“Why is that so important?”
“Part of the design work has already been done and accepted by the clients.” Cat said. Not true, but he’d never know that. “To fulfill that initial concept I have to see what Joel saw. Experience the same things. It’s absolutely essential.”
Skepticism writ large on his face, Campbell said, “That sounds to me like a load of artistic codswallop.”
“Really. So you’re an expert on art and architecture as well as a great hunter? Well, a lot of time and money has already been spent on this work. I need to follow that route.”
He regarded her for a moment. “All right. Mount Elgon. We can’t linger, we’re getting into the rainy season. Eventually we’ll have to cross part of the Mara, and it can turn into a bog overnight.”
He got up, thumped once on the wall with his fist. A single thump came in answer. A moment later, the door opened, and the man who entered seemed to fill the doorway. As tall as Campbell, six-two, she’d guess, as broad, with skin black enough to have a blue cast to it. Long eyes set in a square, high-cheekboned face. Wide flaring nostrils, well-curved prominent lips. He looked aristocratic, aware of his blood.
“My partner, Tom M’Bala,” Campbell said. “Our client, Tom. Miss Cat Stanton.”
M’Bala turned his head sharply. Not quite a classic double take, Cat thought, but close. The look on his face was more than puzzled. He looked stunned.
“Yes, well, you’ll get used to the idea,” Campbell said.
M’Bala recovered quickly. He took the hand Cat held out, bent over it. The old-fashioned gesture sat easily on him.
“Karibu. Welcome to Kenya.” His English was fluent, but clearly not his mother tongue.
“Thank you. I’m glad you’ve decided to make an exception in my case.”
He looked at her carefully as if uncertain of her meaning.
“I’m told Campbell Safaris never take women into the bush,” Cat said blandly.
“Ah,” M’Bala said. He glanced at Campbell.
“She was about to engage Brian Ward. Or get a crew together and follow Stanton’s route alone.”
Tom answered in Swahili. The two men exchanged a few sentences, then Tom turned to Cat. “I’m sorry about your brother. He was a good man.”
“Yes. He was. Thanks.”
“Have another cup of coffee,” Campbell said. “I need a few minutes with Tom.” The two men left, closing the door behind them.
Cup in hand, Cat turned to examine the photographs. Through the open window she heard the men talking, but not in English. The voices faded. A door closed. Cat studied the pictures, her eyes sliding over them until her attention was caught by a group of recent snapshots stuck in the frames of the older, sepia-toned prints.
Morag, laughing and holding the neck of a large bay horse, her windswept hair tangled with the animal’s mane. No wonder he’s captivated, Cat thought. She felt her own thirty-third birthday pressing closer.
“Those are very old pictures.” Campbell was at her side. He had entered with the soundless tread of an animal. “A record of the hunting skills of several generations of Campbells and M’Balas.”
All of the framed photographs were of trophies of the gun. Groups of men, black and white, grinned triumphantly into the camera as they stood over dead bodies. Elephants, lions, buffalo, rhino. Antelope too numerous to count.
“I see the way the guns are held,” Cat said. “Interesting.”
Campbell leaned forward to see what she meant. Then he grunted. In every photograph, the guns were braced against knee or hip, rampantly upright. “You think that’s significant?”
Cat shrugged, picked up her bag. “Am I going to meet your father?”
“Unlikely. He runs a farm upcountry.”
“I’d like to thank him for the arrangements he made for Joel.”
“I’ll tell him.”
“While you’re about it, ask him what progress he’s made getting the police report.”
“Right.”
Campbell walked with her to the cab, talking about their departure. He insisted on leaving the following morning, and she hesitated before agreeing. It would afford no time for her to pursue the questions about Joel’s death here in Nairobi, but she could do that when she returned.
They passed a pair of double doors that had been closed earlier. She glanced into the room, a comfortable masculine retreat of leather couches, an armory of hunting rifles in glass-fronted cabinets. Zebra skins scattered on the dark polished wooden floors.
A large portrait of Morag hung over the fireplace, a snowcapped mountain in the distance behind her.
When she got back to the hotel it was lunchtime, and she had missed a call from Stephen. He’d left a message.
“Everything in motion. Take a few days.”
She called him right away, but there was no reply.
She’d have to wait until he called again.
Before she left, she would make her daily call to her office in Los Angeles. But suddenly it seemed important that someone in Nairobi should know that tomorrow at dawn she would be leaving the city with Campbell Safaris. She picked up her bag, left the hotel.
Seven
Father Gaston’s church was Gothic, steepled, and looked as if it would be more at home under the soft sky of an English village than baking in the heat of an African sun. With the noisy crowded slum pushing against its fence, the church reminded Cat of a rather grand lady who found herself in reduced circumstances, but was still holding her chin—and her skirts—high, trying against all odds to keep up appearances.
Cat knelt beside a grave in the shadow of an unfamiliar African tree. The graveyard seemed filled with small graves; so many children had died before reaching their first birthday. She pushed back the tangled growth of weeds concealing a headstone.
“‘Henrietta Gilmour,”’ she read. “‘Born April 18, 1915. Died January 9, 1916. An English rose faded on foreign soil.”’
The British had paid a heavy price for Empire, she thought. A weight in her chest welled into tears, and she took several deep breaths, knowing the grief was not for Henrietta, dead these seventy years.
Joel should not be in that impersonal necropolis in Los Angeles, she thought, crisscrossed with roads, filled with the activities of urban death. But nor would he rest in a quiet graveyard like this. He should be in the wilderness somewhere, his ashes strewn where he would feel the most peace. She sat back on her heels, remembering. He was buried close to their mother’s grave—he’d always adored her, made excuses for her. Something she had never been able to do, even after her mother’s suicide. The hot African day faded, and she was back in that terrible bathroom in the house in Malibu, the blood filled bath, her mother’s pale drained body. She heard a whimper and knew it was her own voice, and she wrestled her mind back to the present.
Cat bent forward, and with a shaky hand, swept another headstone free of overgrown weeds, leaned closer to read the inscription.
“Memsahib!”
Cat looked around. From across the graveyard, a tall, thin black man waved some sort of gardening tool. He shouted at her in Swahili.
Cat got to her feet. It was clear he was warning her.
“I’m sorry,” she called. “I don’t speak Swahili. I’m just looking at the inscriptions.” She started toward him. “I really came to see Father Gaston. Is he here?”
As she got closer, the man stopped shouting, and Cat looked at him, puzzled. Something about him tugged at her memory, but she knew she was mistaken, she knew no one in Nairobi. He turned and ran across the graves, le
aping over headstones, baggy khaki shorts flapping around skinny black legs. He disappeared behind the corner of the church.
“Wait,” Cat called. She hurried after him, keeping to the path, but when she turned the same corner, he was gone, and Father Gaston was emerging from a long, single-story building on the far edge of an untidy garden. Carefully, he pulled the door closed behind him and came to meet her.
“Miss Stanton! What a pleasant surprise.”
“Father Gaston. I should have called first, but I came on impulse. Just got into a cab and came over. I hope you don’t mind.”
The priest took her hand and held it in both of his.
“No, no. It is fortunate I am here today, not about my pastoral duties. Your presence gives me much pleasure. A chance to show you my little church.”
“I’d like that. I was looking at your graveyard.” She glanced over his shoulder. The windows of the room he’d just left were covered by shutters, but she sensed a dark shadow behind one. “I think I upset your gardener.”
“Poor Isaac. When he realized you did not understand him, he came to get me. You had your hands in the undergrowth. Here we have to be very careful. There are many snakes. A quiet undisturbed churchyard is as close to heaven as a city-dwelling cobra is going to get.”
Cat laughed with him at his little joke, allowed him to usher her toward a tree-lined path.
“Come,” he said. “First we walk, then some tea. Yes?”
As they walked, Father Gaston pointed out several statues in the florid, weeping-angel style. He seemed rather proud of them, and she made appreciative noises, sure that Joel had been as tactful when he’d been given the same conducted tour.
“Your brother particularly liked this tiny corner,” Father Gaston said.
He paused in front of a strikingly awful baby angel. Cat smothered a grin. She’d seen clients back down from Joel’s imperious manner, his stubbornly held opinions. But there was never any reason to be concerned about his sensitivity. He would have been more gentle here.
The church itself was musty, smelling of old incense and the sadness of a glory long past. Dutifully she admired the baptismal font, rich with decoration that was vaguely Norman in character. The walls bore the same tablets and inscriptions she had seen in English churches, mostly commemorating men fallen on distant, long-forgotten battlefields. But it was the Christ figure behind the altar that dominated.